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The business press has pegged artificial intelligence (AI) as a disruptor and a job-killer. Labels like these make great headlines. But are they accurate?

Recruiters need help, not replacements.

Although AI is still in its infancy, it’s already shaking up business as usual in the agriculture, energy, mining, healthcare and retail sectors. It’s also changing the way work gets done in key business functions including IT, marketing, communications, HR and legal.

Around 73% of business and IT leaders agree that their companies’ AI initiatives have already transformed the way they do business, according to a recent Infosys survey. Clearly, AI is a disruptor. But is it a job-killer as well?

LinkedIn founder-CEO Jeff Weiner doesn’t think so. He says, “There are really three themes that will shape the future of talent: AI and automation, the skills gap, and the rise of independent work.”

What does the industry say?

My Ally’s point of view is similar, as are those of scores of other companies that – like us – are building the next generation of AI-powered solutions for HR.

As we see it, AI’s great promise isn’t in automating away jobs. but in its ability to streamline inefficient work processes and free people from the burden of tedious, time-consuming tasks that keep them from achieving more valuable, meaningful or important goals.

Recruiting is a perfect example since scheduling candidate interviews is one of the role’s most tedious, time-consuming and labor-intensive aspects. Recruiting coordinators who are without access to AI-powered tools have been known to spend literally hours scheduling a single interview!

The landscape is poised for change.

Scheduling an interview starts by communicating with the candidate to find a date and time that suits them and their interviewer. And when the interview is in group or panel format, it only complicates the task further.

There might also be a need to reschedule everything (perhaps several times) when the candidate, one of the interviewers or the hiring manager suddenly has a scheduling conflict.

This maddening game of “calendar Tetris” can easily keep recruiting coordinators from more strategic tasks, such as sourcing new talent or building relationships with their most promising candidates.

Scheduling interviews is exactly the type of repetitive task that recruiters themselves want to turn over to an AI solution. It’s the very reason we built My Ally, an AI-powered HR platform.

So do recruiters feel threatened?

Not according to a global survey of nearly 800 talent acquisition professionals by Korn Ferry, which found that AI “today gives recruiters the information they need to source and hire higher-quality professionals”.

Without a doubt, there are recruiters and other talent acquisition professionals who are concerned about the long-term implications of AI. All emerging technology creates this kind of concern; it’s a natural reaction.

Here are a couple of key figures from the study:

50% of recruiters welcome AI as a tool, saying it’s making their roles easier.